Startups Say Knowledge Is Power

DesignCrowd

Sydney, Australia-based DesignCrowd secured another $3 million this week from Australian VC firm Starfish Ventures, which also led the first $3 million round of funding for the crowdsourced design platform. The company has now raised a total of $6.3 million; $300,000 was invested in 2009 by angel investors.

Using DesignCrowd, businesses offer an amount of money for a design project and invite the site’s 150,000 designers to submit proposals. Founder and CEO Alec Lynch, who started working on DesignCrowd full-time in 2007, says the platform asks designers to compete on creativity rather than cost, differentiating it from freelance marketplaces like ODesk.

Since launch, the platform has hosted $12.5 million-worth of projects; last month, Lynch says the company did $1 million in transactions. DesignCrowd charges businesses a flat, $40 posting fee, and designers pay DesignCrowd 15% of what they charge their customers.

With the new funding, Lynch says the company plans to continue its expansion internationally. Forty percent of revenue now comes from the U.S., where Lynch intends to open an office, likely to be located on the west coast.

Futurelytics

Futurelytics

Big data startup Futurelytics, based in the Czech Republic, announced it has closed an $800,000 seed round led by Index Ventures and Credo Ventures. The cloud-based platform specializes in “predictive analytics,” through which it helps businesses make decisions based on data from various inputs, including Google Analytics, MailChimp, Constant Contact and Salesforce, among others.

CEO and founder Daniel Hastik says the company, which received some funding after participating in…